The attraction of right-wing European nationalism in one man’s life receives superficial treatment in this dark story.
A young man slides into neo-Nazism in post–World War II Iceland.
The discovery of the protagonist’s body in an English railway car on Page 1 sends an unmistakable signal that this will be a grim book. But this slim novel—the account of a young man’s budding career in nationalist politics in late 1950s and early '60s Iceland, cut short when he dies of cancer at age 24—offers little insight into what brought Gunnar Pálsson Kampen to his ignoble end and even less drama in its telling. There’s nothing about Gunnar’s childhood in postwar Reykavík hinting that through his teens he’ll gradually be transformed into an activist spreading falsehoods about “global Zionism” and defending the “right of the Aryan to cultivate his heritage.” The novel’s epistolary middle section traces Gunnar’s growing attachment to far right ideology through the 1950s, as he connects with real-life characters who include George Lincoln Rockwell, longtime leader of the American Nazi Party, and Nazi sympathizer and spy Savitri Devi, both of whom spent time in Iceland during their lives, without revealing any clear reason for his growing obsession over the hold he claims the “Synagogue of Satan” has on the world or his motivation to create a political party he calls the Sovereign Power Movement in a country whose Jewish population would barely fill a small chapel. In an afterword, Sjón admits he put aside any attempt to “employ pathos or myth” and that what he was “looking for instead was what made my character normal, to the point of banality.” The flaw in that approach is that it turns Gunnar into a character who lacks sufficient depth or interest to engage the reader’s emotions, for good or ill.
The attraction of right-wing European nationalism in one man’s life receives superficial treatment in this dark story.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-60336-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2021
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab’s era-spanning follow-up to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020).
In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife—even a wealthy one—is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she’s found trying to kiss her best friend. She’s despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow—who has a secret connection to Maria’s widow from centuries earlier—appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she’s brave enough. In 2019, Alice’s memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn’t meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice’s flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines.
A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop.Pub Date: June 10, 2025
ISBN: 9781250320520
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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